


Hot Sixteenth

by Blue_Lacquer



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 03:00:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4123336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Lacquer/pseuds/Blue_Lacquer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Mai's sixteenth birthday and Ty Lee reminds her to make a wish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hot Sixteenth

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on livejournal.

The moon was high when Mai slipped out of the house, escaping from the horde of party goers. She wandered downhill through the garden, skirting wide around the knot of people admiring the fountain shaped like a fire lily, moonlit water sparkling on red stone. She finally found seclusion by the tool shed, a boring little building that did not attract appreciative audiences. She sat down on the step and closed her eyes, leaning against the door. The party was winding down, and no one would miss her for a little while. The dinner, the toasts, the receiving line, and the music were all finished, and now guests gathered into small groups for less formal socializing. Azula held court with the military officers in the sitting room, impressing on them the need to smash the Earth Kingdom forever. Her mother's personal friends cooed over her three month old brother in the nursery. Her father huddled with his fellow politicos in the gazebo. Her uncle wasn't there--he had been on his way when he was called back to the Boiling Rock because of an escape attempt. He would be sorry to miss seeing her on her birthday, but not sorry to miss the party. She'd lost track of Ty Lee, but her friend was probably standing on her head or flirting with a boy in some corner of the house, possibly doing both at once.

Of course Zuko was not there. She missed him. If he were there, they could be sitting together right now. She wouldn't have to be alone to escape the gossip and the social climbing and the tipsy older men. She managed to keep thoughts of him at bay throughout the whirl of party preparations and the party itself, but now those thoughts rose like the tide. Where on earth was he? What was he doing at this moment? Was he actually searching for the Avatar? She hoped he found _something_ \--whatever it may be--that would help him, so far from home.

She closed her eyes and forced Zuko out of her mind before she started to cry. She sighed. It was her big birthday bash--her hot sixteenth, the day she became a woman, another excuse for her parents to demonstrate their wealth and influence. Her name was on the gifts, but the party was not really hers. Between the Princess, the baby, the politicking and Ty Lee and all six of her pretty sisters, no one paid much real attention to Mai. It was the dawn of her adulthood, and she was supposed to be full of ambition, desire and the sense of her own potential, but she felt bored, restless and useless. Knife throwing alone could only get a girl so far. It seemed like everyone in the Fire Nation had grand plans for themselves except her. Even Ty Lee wanted to join the circus, and a strange ambition was still ambition.

"There you are," Ty Lee said. "You're missing the party."

Mai opened her eyes. "I've been at the party for three hours. I doubt I'm missing anything by ducking out for five minutes."

Ty Lee stretched her arms over her head and said, "I'm just making sure you're not out here moping alone on your birthday."

"I am not moping. I just need a break from the army of people in my house. It's like they're holding the Fire Days Festival in there." Ty Lee, being from a large family, was used to being surrounded by a crowd in a way she wasn't. And, all right, she was moping a little.

"Mm-hm." Ty Lee touched her toes, then bobbed back up to ask excitedly, "Have you burned a wish yet?"

"No."

"Come on, we should do it now!"

She was going to protest that wish burning was a silly game for a child's birthday, but Ty Lee grabbed her hand. She sighed, letting herself be pulled along. It would make Ty Lee happy, and she didn't have anything else to do, except go back inside and smile politely at people, whether she liked them or not, whether she knew them or not. She didn't have to make a wish. She would just scribble something on the paper, fold it into a bird and light it. If her words reached the spirit world on the smoke, as the custom said, she figured the spirits would be confused by her nonsense message. She had no need to wish for material things--whatever she wanted, she could just ask her parents to buy. There were other wishes she could make, but she didn't believe they would come true, even if the spirit world existed. She didn't see the point in bothering to wish for the impossible.

From the house, they retrieved paper, pen and ink and a small enamel bowl in red and black. The garden verandah was deserted, so they sat on the bench by the lanterns there.

"The lights are so pretty," Ty Lee said. Mai looked up. Strings of red and yellow silk lanterns lined the paths through the sloping grounds, light curving through the darkness like strokes of the pen. She saw people wandering, illuminated one moment, shadowed the next, but always drifting toward the next light. To her surprise, she suddenly had a wish.

She smoothed the paper on the arm of the bench. Ty Lee made a show of turning away so she wouldn't see. She wrote, and folded the paper, her wish inside the bird's fragile body. Ty Lee carefully lowered one of the lanterns and opened it, exposing the flame. Mai perched the wish bird between the tips of her fingers, touched it to the fire, then set it in the bowl to burn. Smoke curled into the air as the paper curled into itself, white turning to orange and then to ash.

Ty Lee placed the lamp back on its hook, then picked up the bowl and looked at the burnt remains. Mai knew she wanted to ask what the wish was, but it would be bad luck to tell.

The door opened and Mai's mother appeared. "I've been looking for you, Mai," she said. "Minister Meung and his family are leaving. Come say goodbye."

She went into the house with her mother to complete another round of social duties. Ty Lee stayed on the verandah, admiring the garden lights. Mai's words weren't nonsense after all--the desire behind them was real, but unfocused. She had only a dim sense of what her wish coming true might mean, a cloudy vision of life beyond social formalities and the quest for _more_ \--money, power, luxury. She had written: _lights on the path_.

Of course the spirits would probably send her a set of lamps.


End file.
